Flashback, 26-50

26. D. and I arrive at our beach fale at midnight and shake the sand off our shoes, unable to believe that we’re really in Samoa, together.

27. The baby kangaroos come over to me in the hot outback winter afternoon and rest their heads on my knees, just because they are tired.

28. I see an octopus while snorkeling in Fiji.

29. I look down one Monday night in class and realize that I am doing the bicycle shimmy after two years of trying..

30. A cute boy kisses me on the dance floor in Cairns while “With Or Without You” plays, thereby fulfilling a fantasy, at age thirty-two, I have had since I was twelve.

31. While we are walking along a muddy path in Costa Rica, our host stops and cuts down a young sapling and we eat heart of palm right there in the rainforest.

32. D. and I sit talking in the parking lot of the lighthouse at Cape Reinga for twenty minutes before we realize that maybe we should actually get out of the car and see some natural beauty.

33. Alice and I walk through the bush on the Abel Tasman track in our five dollar boardies and cheap jandals, congratulating ourselves on how tough we are.

34. I walk down to the Ballard Market for a week’s worth of pluots and soup-making vegetables.

35. I make pasta and A. and I put on our yoga pants and watch ridiculous reality TV on the suede couches in our lounge.

36. I dress up as a giant singing flower on a float in the 1983 Fourth Of July parade with Ashley and Amy.

37. I take three day to drive from Los Angeles to Seattle, all by myself.

38. Mat and Lydia and Charlie and I build a sandcastle on Front Beach in Whitianga my first Christmas in New Zealand.

39. Marah and Manya and I are eating ice cream one summer night when Ashley calls and tells us she’s heartbroken; I yell “Grab your Chipwich, Manya, we’re going home!” and we all get in the car and go straight to our friend.

40. I look out over the water, standing next to a beautiful perfect boy whose surname I never learn but with whom I fall in innocent, temporary love, and feel the whole world breathing.

41. I sit in my little cannibal-pot Jacuzzi in the Green House, and finally stop sobbing.

42. Bridget says “Just come home, darling,” when I call her from Taupo in the middle of the night.

43. Cherie and I go work-clothes shopping on Lambton Quay in the pouring-down rain, our first week in Wellington.

44. I see Charles Darwin’s Beaglecollections at the British Museum and try to sketch some of the specimens in my paper journal.

45. I sit in the cloud room and listen to my song.

46. A girl working at the bakery we go to in Auckland assumes we’re on our honeymoon, which we do not correct.

47. I take my first walk to the beach at Island Bay.

48. I go to a crazy karaoke party with a bunch of my writing idols in Austin, Texas, in 2003 when we were still calling them “online journals.”

49. Mrs. Proenza asks me to read a writing assignment aloud to my twelfth-grade English class; when I’ve finished she dismisses class early because “no one should have to follow that.”

50. I read Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin for the first time.